Yeva wants her wall record saved. Aster wants the door locked behind her. Dorn wants a sealed section left alone. Mara wants a contaminated rack destroyed. Ivo wants to choose when he moves. Bringing them home means responding to those wishes while finding a workable way through the station.

These five proposed people have fifteen scenes: a short rescue, work aboard and a later encounter with evidence that changes a belief or relationship. Their shared home should offer relief, useful preparation and arguments worth returning to. The scene labels below keep each encounter counted once, including conversations with several participants. Final cast and first survivor remain open.

In these notes, **Sent** means the person has physically arrived aboard and the ship airlock has closed. Scenes can be deferred without decay or a relationship penalty. [Shared crossing rules](#keeping-the-crossing-short) follow the people; [Home and Colony Loop](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Home%20And%20Colony%20Loop) describes their everyday place aboard.

Yeva is a pressure technician who fears that her value is only what she remembers. She wants the ward's pressure record to outlive her, and disputes leaving it for speed. She measured named fittings at dated times and saw the core team return changed. Those are useful memories, with limits: she cannot supply current routes, either alien language or the cause of the change.

**At the ward, with Yeva.** Her first-survivor version uses R-3 Quarantine Ward; the later version uses the Pressure Annex. The wall log is visible, travel air is confirmed and the current short route has been walked.

Photograph the wall while exposed, spending live time and oxygen, or refuse and signal movement. Yeva leaves either way. She confirms flow, cycles her intact refuge door and crosses while the astronaut holds one junction. The choice pits her reason for being saved against the urgency of getting her out.

A completed capture keeps its place and life; the uncaptured wall remains revisitable if reachable. An ordinary living abort returns her to the prepared Clinical Abort Vestibule (R12), where she waits unsent. Her starting ward or annex remains intact. Death during transfer follows the separate pending safeguard below; it does not make her Sent.

**Aboard after Y1 is Sent.** Greet her or postpone; show or withhold the wall record. Help her seat the inherited ship compressor head and route ship supply while the game runs. Dorn need not be present for her contribution to begin.

Her installation persists, but the packing bench remains **setup incomplete** until Dorn physically services that compressor and housing, followed by a demonstrated cycle. Either person's contribution can happen first. Ordinary refill and repacking remain available throughout. The bench makes her knowledge useful without silently completing work while either person is absent.

**Aboard, with a committed culture-test record.** The test compares living tissue under an active treatment profile with tissue under its bypass; a record made only after isolation offers less historical evidence. Show Yeva either record, ask her to support isolation, challenge her general blame of “the core,” or defer.

The full comparison directs her concern toward a particular human-configured line. With only post-isolation results, she admits the earlier cause is unknown. Dorn, only if present and shown the evidence, may dispute that every change is damage. Neither observation settles his identity or the core's innocence. The player can bring them closer to a specific claim without making one person's whole account correct.

| I1 | Pace Calibration Bay, R05 (objective 2) | Pace Approach Junction, R06 |

Five rescue identities use six refuge rooms and seven mutually exclusive host variants; they are not seven rescues. All four abort rooms are already counted. Their assignment does not guarantee adjacent, quiet or short routes in any particular arrangement, and R12 cannot support remote rescues simultaneously. Home and evidence scenes stay aboard. The [scene/evidence crosswalk](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Campaign%20Evidence%20And%20State%20Crosswalk) records the exact shared observations and participants.

**Yeva first.** Objective 1 supplies R-3's bearing; a later short current route enables Y1 at objective 4. Y2 immediately makes her record and incomplete bench useful company aboard. Objectives 5/6 proceed without her testimony. Dorn's later D1/D2 supplies receiver/service and completes the bench prerequisites; Aster waits for her objective-7 booth to gain a verified short route. Yeva's early crew road names are attributed help, not alien translation.

**Aster first.** A1 occupies R-3; A2 supplies the first-return comparison without other people's projects appearing. A3 can narrow her belief after an ordinary death. Yeva later takes the objective-6 annex and may install the bench before or after Dorn services it. Prepared cycles still need both contributions and a demonstration. Physical language, pressure and equipment paths remain available throughout.

**Deeper exploration before anyone comes home.** Defer objective 4 until its short route exists; complete both language tests and reach objective 11 through physical alternatives. Capture the harmful-profile feed, leave isolation open or re-seat it before rescuing anyone. Existing captures survive; missing pre-isolation evidence is not reconstructed, and later post-isolation results retain M3's limits. Reopening requires reaching its control again. Later arrivals respond only to records actually shown. Objective 12's all-room construction remains independent of the cast, intervention and diagnostics.

These schedules fit either [regional dependency order](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Regional%20Discovery%20Map). Equipment, ordinary refill, both language tests, pressure controls, station connection and endings retain routes without survivors. Each person must participate in their own setup and testimony; an absent or uninformed person contributes nothing unseen. Responses remain attributed and never correct the player's notes automatically. Completed fixtures support only their defined later solo use. Sharing a record inside its scene is sufficient; no separate preliminary conversation is required. Yeva's crew names and Dorn's crawl-mark memories help when requested without translating either language or revealing current neighbours.

Keeping all five preserves different human stakes: record versus exposure, reversible closure, respect for a sealed boundary, purge versus evidence and control over one's movement. Their home work improves preparation without becoming upkeep; later evidence changes particular beliefs and relationships.

It still costs five route/abort/horde integrations and survivor behaviours, seven host variants, shared-scene accounting for D2/D3 and optional knowledge-state writing. The one-junction limit could feel contrived if the station rarely offers credible geometry. Portraits and machinery alone will not make players care; these scenes still need dialogue and authored responses.

The strongest smaller cut chooses Yeva first, removes the Aster-first ward branch and Yeva-later annex variant, and keeps Aster's later supply-booth rescue. All five people, fifteen scene identities and main systems survive. The lost tone is substantial: the opening can no longer begin with distrust of the astronaut's arrival, and Aster's berth theory comes only after the player knows someone else. This remains an option, not a selection.

Still open: the first survivor and final cast/names; the rescue death safeguard or finish-versus-retry alternative; broader survivor loss and whether someone already Sent can later die; exact layout, dialogue and state permutations; and the story/core branch. [Open Decisions](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Open%20Decisions) holds the competing proposals, while the [Owner Brief](/Hold%20The%20Flood/Brief) records actual choices. The intended emotional effects remain design hypotheses.